MARTINEZ — A 19-year-old Walnut Creek man will be sentenced to seven years in prison for fatally stabbing a Hercules High School student at a summer house party where tensions between teens from different areas of Contra Costa County escalated to violence.

Daniel Avanesyan pleaded no contest Thursday to voluntary manslaughter for killing Jonart Suacillo Yambao, 17, of Rodeo, on July 2 in Walnut Creek.

Originally charged with murder, the District Attorney's Office offered Avanesyan a plea deal because it "anticipated serious problems proving beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant did not act under 'heat of passion' or in 'imperfect self-defense,' based in large part on provocative acts committed by the victim and his associates," prosecutor Gerald Chang said.

The stabbing occurred after Avanesyan's girlfriend threw a small house party while her parents were out of town and invited a male cousin, who arrived with several carloads of young males from West County, including Yambao. Tension between the two groups, who had a run-in weeks earlier, prompted the girl to ask her cousin and his friends to leave, Chang said.

Soon after, one of the West County teens beat Avanesyan to the ground in the girl's backyard. Dazed and badly beaten, Avanesyan went into the house and got a knife.

He went outside the front of the house and found Yambao and another male jumping on his car, crushing the windshield. The details from there are

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murky, Chang said, as people gave different accounts of what led up to Avanesyan stabbing Yambao three times in the back.

"We have a lot of unanswered questions," said Michael Suacillo, the uncle who helped raise Yambao.

Avanesyan should have called police when he was safe inside the house, Suacillo said, but instead chose to grab a knife and kill over a car vandalism. Suacillo said he believes seven years is too light a punishment for someone who has shown no sympathy or remorse for killing a boy on the verge of adulthood. About 500 people came to the memorial service for the teen who mentored children at his family's church and aspired to be an auto technician like his uncle.

Defense attorney Annie Beles said Avanesyan acted out of fear for his life and is taking responsibility. She described him as a "good kid who got spun into an awful situation ... because too may people came to that party looking for trouble."

"Daniel feels terrible that a young man died in that horrible situation," Beles said. "He never, ever intended to kill anyone. He was trying to protect himself and his friends."